Glossary: G

ghafr

Al-Rāghib: a covering that protects from filth; God's ghufrān and maghfirah mean protecting His servant from being touched by punishment. → Read at 64:14

ghalabah

God's "writing" (kitābah) is His decree and judgment; His messengers' prevailing is apparently in proof, in hidden divine support, and through the nature of faith itself. → Read at 58:21

ghamrah

Al-Rāghib: a body of water that completely covers its place, used figuratively for ignorance that covers its bearer. → Read at 51:11

ghanīmah

Ghunm and ghanīmah are profits acquired through trade, work or battle; here the circumstances of revelation place it in the context of the spoils of war. → Read at 8:41

gharām

Gharām means a difficulty or affliction that strikes a person, remains with him, and does not leave him. → Read at 25:65

gharūr

Al-Rāghib: gharūr is anything that beguiles a person, whether wealth, status, desire, or Satan; commentators say the Deceiver in this verse is either Satan or this world. → Read at 31:33

ghāshiyah

The Enveloper is the Day of Resurrection, so called because it will encompass all people, or cover them with its terrors, or cover the faces of the disbelievers with punishment. → Read at 88:1

ghāsiq

Ṣiḥāḥ al-lughah: ghasaq is "the first darkness of night," and ghāsiq means the night after the disappearance of the twilight; wuqūb means entering, so the verse means the harm of night when it arrives with its darkness. → Read at 113:3

ghawr

The disappearance of water as it seeps into the ground; maʿīn is water that is apparent and flowing. → Read at 67:30

ghayb

The Unseen here is the divine mechanisms of destiny and decree, and "writing" means destining and decreeing, so having the Unseen means having control over destiny. → Read at 68:47

al-ghayb wa al-shahādah

The witnessed is what is accessible to perception and the Unseen what lies beyond it; both are relative to the means of comprehension, all lies within God's knowledge, and God Himself is unseen in the most absolute sense. → Read at 59:22

ghayy

() Al-Rāghib: to act foolishly on the basis of erroneous belief. The ʿAllāmah: on this basis ighwāʾ differs from iḍlāl; iḍlāl diverts someone from the right path while the correct goal remains in his mind, while ighwāʾ also makes the goal forgotten through preoccupation with something else. → Read
() Ghayy is the opposite of rushd, which is seeing things as they are; it is similar to ḍalāl (error), the opposite of hudā, which is taking the road that gets one to one's desired goal, so ghayy is error that leads to loss or perdition. → Read
() Al-Rāghib: ignorance that stems from false belief, as opposed to ignorance with no belief at all. The ʿAllāmah himself glosses ghayy (going amiss) as acting contrary to good sense, and ḍalāl (going astray) as straying from the right path. → Read

ghībah

Majmaʿ al-Bayān: backbiting is mentioning faults behind someone's back in a way wisdom does not allow. Definitions vary, but ultimately it is mentioning, in his absence, something he would not like said about him, so mentioning the sins an open sinner commits publicly is not backbiting. → Read at 49:12

ghill

Rancor, resentment, enmity; its root meaning involves subtle and furtive intermediation (ghilālah is a garment worn between the undergarment and the overgarment). Rancor in the heart is among the greatest impediments to an enjoyable life. → Read at 7:43

Glossary: G ​

Glossary: G